Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Plains CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity, Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU), Great Plains CESU (Funding Opportunity Number G16AS00093), is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (NPWRC) request for a partner institution to help modernize how native pollinators are identified in the Northern Great Plains. The work is framed as science and technology research under a cooperative agreement, with one anticipated award and a maximum funding amount of $68,500. The application closing date listed for the opportunity was July 1, 2016.

At the center of the project is a large existing USGS specimen resource: roughly 30,000 native pollinators collected across the Northern Great Plains, including insects sampled on USDA Conservation Reserve Program lands and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge lands. These specimens were originally assembled to evaluate how federal conservation lands contribute to sustaining native pollinator communities. Importantly, the insects have already been identified using traditional methods, meaning taxonomic keys and light microscopy, so the field collection and baseline identifications are already complete.

The main purpose of the award is to have a CESU partner develop next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches that can identify these pollinators faster and more cheaply than relying on microscopy-based taxonomy alone. In practical terms, the partner would design and test a sequencing strategy that can be applied to the existing specimen collection and then compare the genetic identifications to the taxonomic identifications USGS already produced. That comparison piece is central: it is not only about creating a new genetic workflow, but also about validating it against the known microscope-based determinations so USGS can understand accuracy, limitations, and where genetic methods may resolve uncertainty or, conversely, produce mismatches that need explanation.

Beyond the immediate deliverable, the opportunity also signals a longer-term research direction that USGS wants to build toward in later years: a whole-insect, multi-assay sequencing protocol. The idea is a single sequencing run that could simultaneously (1) identify the pollinator species, (2) genotype the pollinator (supporting population genetics and diversity analyses), and (3) characterize key biological associates such as the plant species represented in pollen loads, the insect gut microbiome, and parasites or pathogens. If developed, this kind of integrated assay would make it much easier to study how nutrition, disease and parasites, and genetic diversity interact to influence pollinator health and the long-term stability of pollinator communities. The opportunity makes clear that USGS currently lacks in-house expertise to build these genetic sequencing identification tools for Northern Great Plains pollinators, which is why the agency is seeking a CESU partner to provide that specialized capability.

Eligibility is limited to CESU partners under the Great Plains CESU framework (the listing notes “Others” with additional eligibility details referenced in the full announcement), and the issuing agency is the Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (DOI-USGS). Overall, the project is essentially an applied methods-development effort: take a large, already-identified regional pollinator collection and create a validated, scalable sequencing-based identification pipeline that can reduce time and cost for USGS pollinator research now, while laying groundwork for more comprehensive multi-factor ecological and health assessments in the future.

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